Director Chris McKay: Batman Minus Money Equals Nightwing

Ever since Warner Bros. relaunched its Batman franchise with Christopher Nolan‘s incredible Dark Knight Trilogy, Bruce Wayne has been a solo operative in his never-ending war against crime in Gotham City. While we got a kick out of the fact that John Blake’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) real first name in The Dark Knight Rises was Robin, we’ve all been waiting for the actual Robin to grace the big screen alongside his darker, grittier mentor.

Twenty years after his last appearance in the awful Batman & Robin movie, Dick Grayson will wing his way onto the big screen once again, albeit as his more mature alter-ego, in the solo Nightwing movie. Warner Bros. has picked someone familiar with the character to bring Nightwing to the big screen in Chris McKay, who directed the hysterical LEGO Batman Movie.

So what makes Nightwing, himself an orphan to crime just like Bruce Wayne, more than a Junior Batman? To McKay, it’s his background as a circus performer, rather than a trust fund kid like Wayne, that informs his character:

Dick Grayson came from a circus family. Essentially people who aren’t rich and they are self-made. They’re entertainers. They’re gymnasts. They’re people who live hand-to-mouth and that’s something that informs him and his attitude… he’s a fascinating guy to me, because he had all the same things happen to him. … He’s this guy who has all these negatives and then even more negatives and yet he remains… Those are things why I like Dick Grayson, why I like the idea of ‘Nightwing’ as a movie.

Bill Dubuque (The Accountant) is writing the Nightwing movie. No release date has been set as of yet.